Bonds' Accomplishments Are Hardly Embarassing
In another article on this site, Brian Wilmer asserts that the way Barry Bonds plays the game of baseball is "an embarrassment." Wilmer offers several points to support his assertion. However, these points are not only unfair to Bonds, they are also inaccurate.
Is Barry Bonds not media friendly? Is despised too kind a word to use when describing his detractors feelings about him? Has his head swollen like Lindsay Lohan's boobs since she visited her plastic surgeon? Absolutely. However, it doesn't mean that his accomplishments are an embarrassment.
Wilmer says that Bonds is an embarrassment on defense. I guess the Giambi brothers, Manny Ramirez and other all-hit no-field players are embarrassments to the game. In fact, all defensive statistics on ESPN.com show Bonds as the better left fielder than Ramirez this year. Bonds has a better fielding percentage, zone rating and range factor than Ramirez. Bonds' supposed jogging on defense is a product of legs that are on the wrong side of 40 for a baseball career and as resilient as tapioca pudding. It isn't that he isn't trying out there, it's that he's old. Bonds is not the defensive player he once was. Neither was his godfather, Willie Mays, at 40. But, nobody called the "Say Hey Kid" an embarrassment
Wilmer called the shift employed against Bonds an embarrassment. You can't blame Bonds for what National League opponents do to try to stop him. I guess Ted Williams was an embarrassment to the game since he was the first hitter to have such a shift used against him. Lost in this the discussion of the shift is the fact that Bonds is leading the National League in batting average and should win his second batting title this year. While it will be done with the fewest hits and official at bats of any batting champ, it shows that he seems to beats the defense, no matter where they play, more than almost anyone else in the game
Another thing you can't blame Bonds for is the behavior of fans that have attended Giants games, at home or on the road, recently. Fans know that they are witnessing history. While these fans will boo even when a team is pitching to Bonds and simply walks him, they want to see him swing the bat. They want to see history made in person. After all, they aren't going to the yard to watch Deivi Cruz play shortstop are they?
As far as body armor goes, it is within the rules of the game. Bonds shouldn't be singled out for using it. Nobody has criticized Craig Biggio when he used the rules to make being hit by a pitch a large part of his game.
We have no idea how Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth or anyone would have played the game as it is today. There is no disputing that Aaron is a man of exceptional class, but that does not mean he would not have taken advantage of equipment that is well within the rules if it were available while he was playing?. To tell me that Aaron wouldn't have looked for any advantage to use against pitchers like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale who used the brushback pitch as a key part of their repertoire seems unlikely.
The statistics continue to disprove many of the opinions Wilmer expressed and implied in the other article.
"Bonds is not even the best player in his league this season"
In talking with Wilmer he told me that he feels Albert Pujols is the best player in the National League this year. Pujols is having a great season, but the numbers say that Bonds is having a better one.
Bonds is leading the league in batting average by 32 points along with on-base and slugging percentage by around 150 points in each category. The only categories that place Pujols leads Bonds are counting is categories like RBI's and hits where Pujols gets several more opportunities to accumulate these statistics because the rest of the league pitches to him.
The much more telling number is the 105 intentional walks issued to Bonds. More than the next seven players in the National League combined. Pujols does have much more support around him so he won't be passed over walked nearly as quickly as Bonds,. Still, no one in the history of baseball has commanded the respect at the plate that Bonds does. Managers talk about Pujols being a great hitter, but they talk about changing the way they manage a game when Bonds is playing against them.
Bonds is so far ahead of Pujols as an offensive player that Pujols couldn't possibly make up any of that difference with this his only adequate glove. If the difference in players still isn't clear, think where the Giants would be without Bonds and compare that to where the Cardinals would be without Pujols. Bonds has lifted a team with J.T. Snow as its second best hitter this season into playoff contention.
Later in the article, Bonds was compared to Aaron with Aaron being tipped as the better all-time player. Wilmer found Hank Aaron to be a better all-around player than Bonds. The article says, "Aaron also excelled on defense, stole bases, hit behind runners, and played a full-faceted game."
Bonds has done all of these things on a level comparable if not superior to Aaron's as comparable a level as Aaron if not better. On defense Bonds is an eight time Gold Glove award winner. While the Gold Glove wasn't even in existence until Aaron was had been in the league a few years and Aaron had more competition for the award, to imply that Bonds' defense wasn't a strength of his game through most of his career is just wrong.
When it comes to stolen bases, Bonds has 506 swipes in almost 600 fewer games than Aaron took to compile his 240. Bonds is the only player in history to have 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases. Just to show how remarkable that is, realize that no other player has broken the 400-400 barrier.
Bonds holds several records to his credit that Aaron can never claim approached. Bonds holds the single season marks in OBP at .582 with his 2002 season. That mark broke Ted Williams old record by nearly 30 points. If he stays on his current pace this year, Bonds will break his own single season record by 30 points, getting on base a ridiculous 61% of the time. Aaron's best single season on-base percentage was .410 in 1971.
Bonds also holds the single season slugging record with his .863 mark. He broke the record of .847 set by Babe Ruth, the man who truly made baseball famous, in 1920. Once again, if Bonds stays at his current level, he will finish this season with the fourth best season in that category ever, giving him three of the top five single season slugging percentages of all time. Aaron's best single season slugging percentage was .669, a great year but almost 200 points below Bonds' best season.
The career comparisons between the two continue along the same lines. Bonds is a .300 lifetime hitter while Aaron finished at .305. Aaron's career OBP was .374 with Bonds' at .442. Aaron's career slugging percentage is .555 with Bonds' at .611. Aaron had 121 intentional walks for his career, Bonds will come close to that during the 2004 season.
And as great a player as Aaron was, there is this quote. "I think that if you take his talent and what he has done in the last few years, I think that [Bonds] is the greatest hitter, the greatest athlete, the greatest ballplayer that has ever played the game — bar none."
That quote was from the Sacramento Bee's September 19th edition. The speaker was some guy named Hank Aaron.
Baseball fans might not like the way that Barry Bonds' goes about his business. But, not liking a player is very different than him being an embarrassment to the game. The numbers bear out the fact that Bonds is the greatest player of all-time and to let that fact be obscured because the player in question isn't a well-liked public figure is embarrassing.
File last modified September 26, 2004
 Support ContractBud.com! Buy attractive CB merchandise now! |
